I can't help but think the music industry is approaching the problem of piracy the wrong way. Part of this comes from my recent reading about leaks of the ACTA treaty that Australia may or may not end up being a signatory to. My thoughts on this treaty are pretty simple though. To me, statutory damages are ludicrous, it doesn't solve the problem of enforcement, it obviously is not designed to benefit the community as a whole and (perhaps most importantly) it seems fundamentally untenable to me that Australia (or any country really) should want to give up its control of intellectual property legislation (particularly when such a treaty isn't really much about intellectual property law) without the legislators putting these kind of proposals to the people they're supposed to represent. Maybe that's a rant for a different occasion though. However, in the mean time I think musicians as well as managers and labels should be focusing on what they individually can be doing to improve their situation. The whole world doesn't need to change for you to make a go of it as an artist.

Obviously, the landscape is very different now to how it was even a couple of years ago, let alone a couple of decades ago when selling plastic discs was just the only business model available to you if you wanted to make a few bucks. Trent Reznor is kind of the poster child for this change in recent years. He did a few very clever things with recent releases for Nine Inch Nails. In fact, he netted himself a few million dollars with an album that was available for free. Crucial to his success is, I believe, the tiered product line and his engagement with fans. I don't mean sitting and replying to every email, but at least attempting to offer a product which might appeal to his more hardcore fanbase. The range of price points make it possible for a fan to spend more money. On most online music stores, all I can get is a track in one format at one price. With Trent, there was a variety of formats (both digital and physical) and a range of price points. In this sort of situation, Seth Godin talks about it well here by way of the "Fan Chasm"- and I think Trent capitalises on this nicely by offering something that will be potentially valuable to the casual listener, as well as to the hardcore fan. Trent also has some fantastic points on how to build a band. Unfortunately though, your newly formed genre-defying rock outfit doesn't have the kind of huge, ridiculous fanbase that Mr Reznor enjoys.

So is just having your tracks up in itunes and getting a pretty myspace page and good enough so that someone will magically discover you? No. In short, I just don't think this happens. Lots of people mention Lily Allen building her audience on the back of Myspace. Maybe this is true to some extent, but to be honest, I'd never heard of her till she got signed to Regal/EMI and they started pushing this angle, with her success supposedly being some sort of grass roots movement almost. But this obviously wasn't all Lily was doing. Obviously she toured prolifically, has a slew of covers and pulled strings where she could - to her credit in my opinion. Obviously she worked to get where she is. But fortunately for you, the musician, you have a wonderful targeted marketing opportunity that very few other industries enjoy and many musicians themselves completely ignore. Live performances afford you a brilliant way to engage a captive audience. In fact, it's targeted marketing you'll probably even get paid to do. Not only does the audience get an idea for how you really sound, but you have the opportunity to engage with them face to face and provide opportunities to purchase under time pressure that utilise the potential connection they've made with you at the show.

This is good business as well as common sense, particularly when you're just starting out, because the kind of people going to gigs and checking you out when you're the opening act have already proven themselves as much more likely to give your music ago than the vast bulk of the traffic you might get online at your own website, or your page on any number of social media sites. Derek Sivers also gives a similar idea a bit of a sound off too if you're interested. I've seen him described as an "Artrepreneur" and he's pretty damn cluey. His site is well worth a look if you're interested in the business of music at all. A rather recent (and very worthwhile article) was also penned (or typed...) by Ian at fistfulayen.com - called Koalas and Uzis. Which discusses some of the issues facing musicians today, as well as a few tools to help handle this and a rather unusual physical product they used to package their music. Thanks also to Andrew McMillen for pointing this one out. Andrew also has a few particularly awesome articles with some creative types, probably my favourite is his interview with Neil Strauss. Of course, no one path is going to work universally for all musicians, but I think that if bands really sit down and think about the opportunities they have, there's more room to make your work more of an artform and less of a commodity than the 99c songs on itunes or Amazon.com would make have you think and this usually does take some effort, thought and planning. Something which maybe is a little hard for someone who's really just wrapped up in their music.

I'll be writing a bit more on this later, for university I was lucky enough to be able to discuss comparative approaches to copyright law and issues of enforcement in Australia, the USA, Canada and China. This will be up soon!